Conversation Repair: Case Studies in Doctor-Patient Communication

professor of teaching medicine in the community, University of Manchester

Frederic W Platt Little, Brown, $24.95, pp 194 ISBN 0 316 71082 2

“Problem-based learning in communication skills with the goal of enabling doctors to modify their attitudes to difficult patients and to manage consultations in a patient-centred way.” Put like that the main message of Conversation Repair sounds dull. It is not. That sentence probably contains more jargon than all seven chapters of this delightfully honest and fresh approach to teaching communication.

Frederic Platt has been teaching communication skills in Denver, Colorado, for 20 years. Here he brings together …